How to Find and Attract New B2B Leads for Your Business

B2B lead creation is critical in enabling a sales force to nurture and close leads consistently. More than half of the marketers say that one of the most difficult difficulties they encounter is producing quality leads.

There is no one optimum channel or approach for generating B2B leads. It’s usually a combination of organic and paid channels. Within the best-performing teams, these factors combine to provide a consistent supply of sales leads.

Are you trying to increase the number of leads coming into your company? Then you have come to the right place. Take a look at these ideas for bringing fresh B2B sales to the lead funnel. We’ve got you covered on everything from defining your target consumer to employing lead creation tools. So go to work on getting those leads and watch your company flourish!

What is business-to-business (B2B) lead generation?

A lead is a person or entity who is interested in your products and might potentially become a customer. Lead generation is the process of attracting and locating leads. Leads may be created in a variety of methods, including through non-traditional channels and mediums where your target demographic spends time.

The leads that are placed into a sales funnel are nurtured throughout the cycle until they close. Selling becomes challenging and unpredictable if a B2B lead generating procedure isn’t in place.

Let’s look at how B2B lead generation works and how important it is for a well-functioning sales funnel now that we’ve figured out how to build up the procedures and channels.

Let’s discuss the different ways to set up B2B lead generation:

Landing Pages for Websites

Landing pages on your website are pages that your leads arrive at via various traffic sources. Visitors can be attracted to landing pages in a variety of ways. Then you may have them execute actions that are relevant to the final objective. The following are some examples of landing pages:

Product pages: 

Product pages are web pages that outline the features and characteristics of a certain product. It fulfills visitors’ informational needs by outlining a product’s primary selling aspects. Visitors who believe your product can help them solve an issue might be routed to a Call-to-Action button. CTAs serve as a lead collection technique, allowing you to follow up with them later.

It is vital to have internal links to your product pages on your website for them to create traffic. Visitors from your website’s traffic-generating pages can be sent to these product pages this way. You may include connections to your website from other websites all across the internet, allowing users on other platforms to locate and visit you.

Giveaways and Ebooks 

Ebooks, as opposed to product pages, are a source of instructional information, which is frequently in the form of thorough case studies and how-tos. They aren’t made to promote a certain product. Leads and visitors are educated about an ecosystem, process, or approach through ebooks, which eventually leads to product utilization. Ebooks have a higher perceived value among your visitors because they are instructional.

Ebooks are frequently placed on traffic-generating landing sites. Visitors are then converted into leads by completing a form or verifying their email addresses to receive access. Discounts, books, merchandise, and other items are given away in return for contact information in giveaways.

Tools that are available for free

Free tools are a technique to show up in search engines for derived information-related inquiries. Quick computations and measurements, as well as analysis, are examples. These solutions may be used to create traffic and acquire visitors for your b2b lead generation process by hosting them on landing pages. Because this is a transactional search, introducing frictional elements like capture forms will lead consumers to other tools. Free tools aren’t password-protected like the rest of the resources, but the sites themselves feature CTAs that can lead to lead generation.

• Content Promotion

Inbound lead creation using content marketing is one of the most prominent B2B lead generating tactics. It’s a method of creating and distributing useful information in a variety of media that keeps your audience and ideal consumers informed or educated. Content marketing, like nurturing in sales, works by nurturing your audience, creating trust, and finally assisting your audience in buying from you or referring new buyers to you.

DesignRush, a small business SEO company, promotes its content by delivering helpful information to customers, which builds trust, and then they serve the consumer by supporting them in selecting local businesses.

The following are some of the several platforms on which you may create and share content:

Blogs

Many firms’ content marketing activities revolve around blogs, which are critical for generating B2B leads. They may be thought of as a condensed form of Ebooks that are often produced. Blogs are designed to attract visitors from search engines and social media. CTAs that link to free resources such as Ebooks or newsletters may then be used to collect visitors to your blogs.

When writing blog entries, the focus should be on the potential for search traffic and social media sharing. Also, in your blogs, address evergreen themes – those that will remain relevant in the future and hence continue to drive visitors. How-to manuals, detailed lists, deep dives on procedures, design, best practices, and other resources are among them.

Pro tip: Keep your business blogging consistent. It will assist you in developing an audience for your whole brand.

Podcasts 

Podcasts are audio recordings of talks about a variety of topics, frequently featuring a guest who is an expert on the subject. They’re available in several forms. You may reach a bigger audience by publishing video versions on venues like YouTube. Monthly podcast listeners are up 16 percent year over year, surpassing 100 million in the United States alone.

This demography also includes B2B purchasing decision-makers. It’s a terrific way to grow your company’s presence since you can attract that audience.

Podcasts function in a similar way to blogs in terms of generating leads through content distribution and nurturing. However, because it is a one-way channel, conversions cannot be immediately tracked (i.e. no buttons, popups, etc.). You can, however, request that your listeners go to branded URLs that are exclusive to each podcast. These can entice them to sign up or present them with additional free materials in return for their contact information.

It will also matter what themes you discuss, just as it does with blogs. Podcasts featuring well-known guests are more likely to gain listeners. As a result, the initial focus should be on inviting good visitors. As your podcast’s audience expands, you’ll see an increase in website traffic, which will lead to more leads for you.

Newsletters

If you’ve collected email addresses from visitors on your website, webinar, or at an event you hosted, you may nurture them by sending email newsletters (Value loaded). Sign-ups and conversions aren’t usually the goal of newsletters. They’re used to link subscribers to fresh material on your websites, such as blogs, podcasts, and other forms of media. In some ways, newsletters are unusual in that they allow you to capture your audience’s attention on demand by delivering an email newsletter. This is in contrast to how platforms like blogs and podcasts function, where users must seek out your information.

Apart from directing subscribers to new content on your website, newsletters also play an important role in nurturing your subscribers. They enable your

subscribers to consume more of your content regularly. In long term, this builds trust and reputation, eventually generating leads.]

Guest posts

Guest posts are blog articles that you write and have published on other people’s websites. They’re designed to attract traffic and nurture your target audience, which already exists on these websites, in the same way, that blog articles do. Contextual links back to your website that drives people to your website content are used to capture leads, while referral traffic is used to produce leads.

Webinars

Webinars are live online events, usually in the form of conversations or speeches, on topics that are relevant to the target audience. Because these are live events, visitors can engage with event guests and other participants, which is seen to be quite beneficial.

Webinar hosts also have the opportunity to talk about and showcase their goods and services that address an issue that the webinar attendees are interested in. This helps to raise product awareness and turn webinar attendees into leads.

GrowthHackers

GrowthHackers is a group of entrepreneurs, salespeople, and marketers that discuss all things connected to business growth. This is one of the most effective B2B content distribution tools for attracting your target market. You may share information from other websites and discuss it with other members of the GrowthHackers community.

You may make a post with a title, synopsis, and a link to another blog post on your site. This facilitates the initiation of a dialogue among community members about your blog topic. This will lead to members of the GrowthHackers community visiting your website and engaging with your content.

Hackernews

Y-combinator runs Hackernews, a community platform comparable to GrowthHackers. The majority of the members of the community share fresh postings about technology and trends. Outside of it, however, there are no restrictions.

You may write a post with a link back to your website, similar to Growth hackers. Based on its popularity, it may potentially make it to the HackerNews front page (upvotes and comments). Posts that appear on the homepage receive higher engagement, resulting in increased visitors and leads.

• Promotional materials

Advertisements are a non-organic technique to contact your target audience. The majority of these ads are designed to drive traffic to your website and convert them into leads. Search engines like Google and Bing, as well as social networking sites like LinkedIn and Twitter, are the most common ad networks.

Let’s have a look at how ad-based B2B lead generating works.

Use of social media

Businesses may advertise on social media networks like LinkedIn and Twitter, which have billions of daily active users. According to a poll, 83 percent of B2B marketers confess to utilizing social media advertisements and sponsored posts to spread information. When it comes to generating B2B leads, LinkedIn has been found to produce 277 percent more leads from visitors than other social sites.

B2B content is being circulated and promoted on social media in greater numbers than ever before. You may further leverage their participation by advertising on social networks. All of these social media networks include advertising features that allow you to target people based on their likes, region, age, and other factors. Ad campaigns may be created in a variety of media, including text, display, and video. The call to action (CTA) in your ad can be set up to encourage your viewers to fill out forms or visit your website. Other social media platforms, such as Quora, LinkedIn, and Instagram, allow you to execute comparable ad campaigns on their networks.

Search engine

On the SERP, Search Engine Search advertising is shown next to the search results for the terms you purchased the ads for. The majority of these are text-based and clickable. If you use Google Shopping to market your product, it will display as a thumbnail with product pricing and photographs.

Search advertising is clickable, much like social media ads, although user intent may differ between the two sites. While social advertising is displayed based on past activity, search ads are displayed next to what the user is looking for right now. Depending on what you’re selling or offering in your ad, this will affect your conversions. Search advertisements have been shown to return $11 for every dollar invested in terms of ROAS (Revenue Derived From Ads). According to the same estimate, search advertisements account for 45 percent of all internet earnings.

Advertisements that appear on the screen

In terms of how they’re shown on an Ad network, display advertising is comparable to social media ads. The majority of ad networks are made up of partner websites and publishers that provide ad inventory to networks and advertisers. With over 2 million websites and billions of views for advertisers, Google Display Network is the most popular display network.

These partner websites frequently display advertising in the form of banners and thumbnails. In contrast to text-only searches, they are frequently graphical. They can be placed on websites that your target audience frequents based on their search history and interests

 Native Advertisement 

Native advertisements, like display ads, graphically show promotional material. Native advertisements, on the other hand, are designed to blend in with genuine content, making them less obtrusive and more interesting.

Native Ads may be found on platforms like Outbrain and Taboola, and they have comparable targeting and pricing as Display Ads.

Sponsored advertisements

Sponsored spots are ad spots purchased within the content with a large organic reach. One technique to undertake influencer marketing is to support content creators. It expands your reach and helps you create trust with the influencers’ audience. odoo is an example of a sponsored spot.

You may develop landing pages with special offers and personalized content that are exclusive to the sponsored campaign. Sponsored content generally outperforms ordinary commercials in terms of brand building and retention, because organic material remains online indefinitely.

Sponsorship rates are measured in CPMs (Cost per 1000 views). CPMs are usually more expensive than display or search ad impressions. CPM varies depending on the creator’s audience involvement, demography, and other factors.

• Referral programs for users

User recommendations are an excellent approach to keeping current clients and gaining new ones. User referral programs make it simpler to naturally attract new consumers from existing satisfied customers if your product has a high NPS and online ratings.

Referral marketing with Dropbox as an example

Take, for example, Dropbox. They created a two-sided referral network for its users, in which both sides benefit from recommendations. As a consequence, in just 15 months, they were able to increase their user base by over 3900 percent. Dropbox made this feasible by implementing a few crucial features that made the process go more smoothly.

Because the recommendation procedure was integrated into the onboarding process, it was difficult for users to ignore it. Apart from that, it allowed users to import their full contact list from their email, making it easier for them to recommend a large number of new customers at once. By awarding users with credits or discounts on your service in exchange for recommendations, you’re not only guaranteeing that your existing customers are rewarded, but also that they stay with you longer so they may maximize their incentives.

• Check out several websites.

Review sites such as G2 and Capterra are excellent sources of leads. Your potential buyers will frequently compare your goods to that of competitors, which is made easier by reviewing websites. Reviews have a significant impact on conversions since they represent a product’s quality and credibility. According to studies, higher-priced items experienced a 380 percent increase in conversions when evaluations were placed alongside them.

Conversions and the influence of reviews

As a result, having reviews on these platforms will successfully generate more traffic to your website, which will eventually turn into leads. Both paid and organic strategies may be used to create leads from review websites. Let’s take a closer look at them.

Organic

You may simply list your goods on their platform to earn leads organically from review websites. For most of the big review websites out there, listing your goods on the platform is free. Following that, your product will appear in searches linked to your category, and people will finally visit your website based on their impressions.

Once your product has been posted, aim to acquire reviews from your current consumers on the product listing. When potential leads are comparing you to your competition, reviews might be a determining factor. More reviews on your listings will lead to more conversions to your website.

Paid

Most review websites also provide a paid listing option, which boosts your product’s exposure in search results. Aside from that, services like Capterra and G2 can help you get more reviews by giving reviewers gift vouchers in return for their feedback.

• Use of social media

One of the most effective methods to create leads and expand your internet presence is through social networking. Social media posts, like blogs, make you discoverable on search engines and in user feeds. Let’s look at how you can use each of these channels to grow your following.

LinkedIn

With over 700 million active members, LinkedIn is the largest professional network. LinkedIn is a terrific location to interact with professionals if your target audience is made up of them. You may expand your reach to people outside of your followers by providing updates, blogs, podcasts, and webinars and creating engagement in the form of likes and comments. As more people see your LinkedIn profile, more people will visit your website, resulting in greater traffic and leads.

Facebook

Unlike LinkedIn, Facebook is not a professional network. It does, however, have a broader network and a greater reach. If a potential lead is on LinkedIn, there’s a good possibility they’re also on Facebook. Running Facebook campaigns helps you to broaden your audience among Facebook users, increase traffic to your website, and, as a result, generate more leads.

Twitter

With 330 million active users, Twitter is a modest network compared to LinkedIn and Facebook, but it has a very engaged audience. Twitter users are passionate about new trends and events, and they spend a lot of time learning about new products and services. Aside from that, Twitter users are quite loud about their thoughts and beliefs. Happy customer tweets provide you with a lot of credibilities and can help you attract more intent-rich leads to your profile and website.

Quora

In terms of how it works, Quora is more akin to a knowledge network. Questions and answers fuel engagement on Quora, and Quora’s recommendations and discovery algorithms are almost as aggressive as TikTok’s. Technical questions in your area are ideal for writing replies since they pre-qualify readers’ intentions before visiting your website or landing page. Many Quora profiles, including those of businesses, have been able to earn millions of views and drive traffic as a result of their answers.

• Community

A collection of people who have common interests and activities form an online community. These groups might exist on social networking sites like Facebook, Reddit, and others. Let’s take a look at how being a part of these groups may help you create leads.

Groups on Facebook

Because Facebook already has such a large user base, creating Facebook groups is one of the most effective methods to connect with other like-minded people. Try using Facebook to look for hobbies and themes in your business or specialty, and then filter them by groups. While many groups are open and may be joined right away, some are locked and require admin permission before you can join.

Forums

Forums are websites dedicated to serving communities in a certain area. This might range from technical support to job productivity, marketing, and sales, among other things. Consider Facebook groups, but on a larger scale. There will be discussions (or threads) about certain issues in which the user who posts will seek advice or answers to difficulties. Share your thoughts and assist users in these groups in resolving issues.

Many of these forums feature badges for the most helpful members; if you reach those higher levels, you can start contextually pushing your product. Users are more likely to check out your goods and buy from you if you are a trusted forum member.

Reddit

Reddit is another fantastic community site with hundreds of thousands of “subreddits,” which are essentially topic-specific communities. The site is well-known for allowing anonymous posting, and it frequently gets real user criticism. Find out whether there’s a subreddit dedicated to the product category you offer and get a sense of the content.

Shameless promotions and direct links are frequently blocked, and even if they are allowed to through, they are closely reviewed by users. So being genuinely inquisitive about their difficulties and asking for open feedback on your product is a terrific method to pique Reddit users’ interest in your product. Another interesting idea would be to provide special discounts and offers for Reddit members.

• Channel Partners & Distributors

Once you’ve established your brand and have a bunch of happy customers, you can explore channel partnerships to scale your sales and B2B lead generation. It is a model where a 3rd party (publications, individuals, lead generation business, etc) sells your product to their audience and is compensated with commissions or fees. Let’s learn about different types of channel partners and how they can generate leads.

Bundling and co-marketing

There may be complementary or complementary third-party products and services that complement or go well with your products and have audiences that are comparable to yours. You might offer your items to their audience by packaging them with theirs for discounts, and vice versa, by cooperating with these firms. This might benefit both firms by allowing them to reach out beyond their current audience and acquire quality prospects. To investigate such possibilities, you may simply contact employees of the other organization’s Partner Marketing or Channel Marketing teams.

Affiliate marketing 

Affiliate marketing is a commission-based arrangement in which publications or partners with large audiences or clients sell your items to their audience in exchange for a fee. Affiliates can help you expand your sales if you have a well-known product with satisfied consumers. You’ll only pay commissions to clients who have purchased from you since affiliates are only paid on real sales closing, not leads generated. Even if margins are a little lower, you’ll be able to generate leads and close transactions without needing to increase your sales and incur overheads.

Marketing with influencers

Influencer marketing is similar to affiliate marketing where it enlists the help of people who have large audiences to promote your product. Having the buy-in of influencers also helps you be more trustworthy – 97 percent of purchasers believe that having reliable sources of information and views is critical. Because they’ve been engaged with their material and following them as a vote of trust, audiences care about influencers’ thoughts.

Often, these industry thought leaders may discover a good product or service and tweet about it without you having to inform them. This can only happen naturally, and the easiest approach to start a campaign like this is to give them access to your goods, allowing them to test them out while you handle the rest.

Otherwise, you might simply ask for a shout-out, and it’ll typically be up to them to decide what they may obtain in exchange, subject to logic. You may even invite them to invest in your product/company so that they have a financial stake in its success and can promote it over time. In any case, once you have access to their audience, you’ll see an increase in traffic, which will lead to more leads and conversions.

• Public Relations

Public relations (PR) is a method of creating material in partnership with other media, people, and businesses. PR allows you to access new audiences outside of your existing marketing channels and boost referral traffic.

Let’s look at a couple of different techniques to perform public relations and produce leads.

Interviews

Don’t take your expertise and insights for granted if you’re an expert in your area. Everyone wants to hear what someone more knowledgeable than them has to say in today’s consumer-driven environment. For starters, be a thought leader and often provide material on your channels. Even if you don’t have a large enough audience, interviewers who look you up when you contact them for partnerships will recognize you. 

Links

Similar to doing interviews, if you’ve amassed a large enough collection of high-quality material, you’ll want to have it linked from other sites. This accomplishes two goals: it informs search engines about your authority on the subject, and it promotes referral traffic from the website from which you were linked.

Linking opportunities can be identified in popular publications when certain technical or difficult-to-understand terms and phrases haven’t been linked to a place where the reader can learn more about the issue.

Simply contact the publication’s editor or writers and request that they review your piece on the subject and, if appropriate, link to it. This will aid in the retention of their readers.

Outbound prospecting 

Outbound prospecting is a technique for cold-calling new consumers and pitching them your goods. Let’s take a look at some of the several ways you might reach out to your potential leads.

outreach to strangers

Cold email is one of the most often used methods of business communication. If you have a list of loosely qualified leads from your website or LinkedIn prospecting, you may nurture and close them by sending cold emails. With solutions like SalesHandy, you can send customized automated cold email campaigns to your list of prospects and qualify them for sales.

Calls made from outside the company

You may make outbound calls to your leads to promote your product if you have collected phone numbers from your website visitors or captured them using B2B lead generation solutions like Clearbit or Snovio. When compared to an email, calling consumers might be obtrusive at times, therefore your script will have a lot riding on it.

You might be able to get it by doing some preliminary research and asking pertinent questions. Because vital services and goods are regularly required, cold calling may be a fantastic way to market them. Because you’re interacting in real time, calling makes it simpler to persuade a consumer to commit to the next level if they exhibit interest.

Outbound calls have a 9 percent conversion rate, which indicates that 9 out of 100 calls will result in meetings and, eventually, conversions. Outbound calls may be a very successful technique to produce and nurture leads for your business, depending on what you’re offering and how well you know the person on the other end of the phone.

Email

InMail is LinkedIn’s messaging service that allows you to communicate with people who aren’t in your network without needing to be connected. They generate 300 percent more responses than email and are more accessible because you can just search for and contact your potential leads rather than having to locate and validate their email address.

LinkedIn’s premium suite of paid offerings includes InMails. Given that you only get 30 InMail credits each month, InMails may or may not be a net positive depending on the size of your ticket.

• Trade exhibitions 

Trade exhibitions and conferences put on by various unions and groups may be a wonderful way to meet new people and network with possible clients. According to CEIR, 81 percent of trade show participants have purchasing power, making them highly positioned to create leads for you.

You may either attend an event as a participant and network with other attendees to generate possibilities, or you can partner with an event to create chances. You may either be an event partner and contribute your services to assist host the trade show, or you can be a sponsor and pay the organizers money. As a partner, you’ll have superior access to attendees in any case, which will help you create high-quality leads.

Wind up: 

Being so linked in today’s world, there may be more options for B2B lead generating than you think. The idea is to diversify, which means you shouldn’t rely on just one or a few sources for all of your leads. This way, even if one of them fails, you may keep producing possibilities. The simpler it is to break into a new channel, the more likely it is to attain saturation and attract competitors. Scaling new channels and nurturing new leads regularly will maintain your sales machine well-oiled and error-free.

Are you satisfied with this B2B lead generation strategy? Do let us know in the comment section.